


et nos cedamus amori

by stevergrsno (noxlunate)



Series: They're Creepy And They're Kooky, Mysterious And Spooky [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternative Universe - Cryptids, Cryptid Family, Cryptids, Family, Fluff, M/M, Valentine's Day, one (1) Actual Heart centerpiece
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-28 15:42:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17790167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noxlunate/pseuds/stevergrsno
Summary: Steve pats Ellie’s shoulder in sympathy, and Ellie lights up under it in the way most do when under Steve’s attention, eyes bright and full of pride, ready to pledge the world to that painful light that shines under his breast bone.Bucky sometimes thinks that it’s really rather fortunate for the world that Steve has morals.Or Steve, Bucky, and their weird extended family does Valentines Day.





	et nos cedamus amori

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a couple hundred words of valentines fun, and then I was like "But what if I make it CRYPTIDS?" and we got this. 
> 
> Original credit for the cryptid family still goes to [this wonderful twitter thread](https://twitter.com/i/moments/1079709861359833088), I woulda never found this au world I like to poke around in without everyone there. 
> 
> Happy Valentines Day!

Steve has a three page rant on the downfalls of capitalism, especially with regards to holidays and Valentine’s Day in particular. 

It starts with “It’s a capitalistic endeavor designed to profit off of the value humans ascribe to love,” segues into a full blown rant on how singleness is viewed as being somehow lacking in the context and that the only “cure” is spending money on things people don’t need, and then ends when Steve has gotten so flaily that he’s practically  _ glowing,  _ the light of righteous indignation casting around him, and Bucky is left with no option but to wrap his arms around Steve’s waist and drag him down into their bed. 

Bucky is relatively certain that Steve being allowed to stew in his fury is how at least one revolution has been started, and while Bucky has never been against a good revolution he’d also like to have a nice romantic day with his husband and make it to family dinner without any uprisings getting in the way. 

“Steve, Stevie,  _ Steve, _ ” Bucky says, watching as Steve goes from righteous indignation and fire in his eyes to merely scowling at Bucky for interrupting him, to a little bit fond as he shoves himself closer into Bucky’s space, “Our first actual date was Valentine’s Day. You love all of this shit. We have ten heart shaped boxes of chocolate in this house right this very moment and you’re going to buy more tomorrow when it all gets marked down. You are literally wearing a shirt with conversation hearts on it -which is awful by the way, how are we supposed to scare the nieces and nephews when you’re wearing that? You fucking love holidays.” 

Steve, in the manner of one who is showing a great deal of patience and wants the world to know it, sighs deeply and shoves at Bucky until he can spread himself out like the worlds biggest, heaviest, somehow still bony as hell blanket, pressing Bucky down into their mattress. 

(The universe, because it’s as awful as Steve is, seems to sing it’s acknowledgement and long suffering solidarity for suffering through Bucky’s shit.)

“First off, I can enjoy the thing while also hating it. I’m a man of many contradictions and that’s allowed.” Which,  _ ‘a man of many contradictions’ _ is an understatement if Bucky has ever heard one, but he won’t argue it this time. 

“Second off?” Bucky asks, tracing a hand up Steve’s spine and across the breadth of shoulders that could hold up the world if they had to. 

Steve makes Bucky think of the Old Gods. Of Atlas, enduring. 

“Second off, I was already sure you were it for me and it’s an easy anniversary date to remember,” Steve says, and Bucky is old in ways he’s beginning to feel, but there’s still something about Steve’s surety, about the surety Steve had seemed to have from the moment he met him, that makes Bucky feel like he’s a scrap of a being again, barely even a hundred years old. 

“ _ Sweetheart,”  _ Bucky says, leaning up to kiss Steve until all he can taste is war and heat, fury and softness and hope, and everything that makes his Steve. 

 

Valentine’s Day has gone approximately the same exact way every year since Bucky and Steve were married: 

Steve wakes up before the sun has even fully crested the horizon, leaves Bucky asleep tucked into their bed beneath silk sheets, and goes for a run like he’s some sort of lunatic who doesn’t know the value of sleeping in. 

When he comes home it’s hours later and with bagels from the place that’s an extra three blocks over but that Bucky likes most. Steve always leaves the bag on the bedside table to tempt Bucky into wakefulness while he showers, and then they end up sitting half on top of each other in bed, eating and chasing cream cheese from the corner of each other’s mouths like they can’t quite bear to stop touching each other for as long as it takes to eat. 

After, Bucky scrolls through his phone and likes six pictures of Ellie and her new boyfriend, frowns at two of Katerina’s  _ supposed _ cat, sighs over Douchey Cousin Jared’s pictures of his beer pong “team”, answers a message from Julie about where Steve got his recipe for the pomegranate apple crisp he brought to New Years, sends increasingly elaborate emojis back and forth with Nat, and tags Aunt Hepsibah in a meme while Steve reads something in the news that eventually leads to a rant. 

The rant leads to them tangled in bed like it always does, and then, inevitably, by the time they’ve managed to untangle themselves it’s time to go to dinner with the family. 

Valentine’s Day dinner is traditionally at Aunt Hestia’s house but there was an incident with the last blood moon that means her house is experiencing some sort of Bermuda Triangle type phenomenon no one wants to examine just yet, and so instead everyone gets to make the trek into Queens to Aunt Hattie’s. 

Aunt Hattie at least seems to be thrilled to be in the rotation for Family Dinner hosting and has decorated accordingly. 

“Is that a real heart in the centerpiece?” Bucky hears Natasha ask followed by Aunt Hattie’s response of “Oh yes, dear, I just got them fresh this morning…” trailing off as she’s steered into the kitchen. 

“Are those-” Ellie asks from just behind Steve and Bucky, bringing with her the same sense that all his nieces and nephews in that generation bring.  That sense of  _ just  _ beginning, the smell of  _ everything- _ the size of an atom about to explode into a universe. 

“Yep,” Steve says, nodding. 

“Huh. And here I thought Aunt Hestia’s theme last year with the pig blood was weird.” 

Steve pats Ellie’s shoulder in sympathy, and Ellie lights up under it in the way most do when under Steve’s attention, eyes bright and full of pride, ready to pledge the world to that painful light that shines under his breast bone. 

Bucky sometimes thinks that it’s really rather fortunate for the world that Steve has morals. 

 

Dinner is, as it always is, a loud affair. Steve and Bucky both get corralled into conversations, only to be grabbed into another one half way down the table, only to fall back into the one they’d been involved in previously. Katerina’s “cat” yowls beneath the table, begging for food that Bucky watches at least six different people -including Steve- pass underneath the table to it. 

Bucky’s just glad to hear the familiar begging. Three Yules ago the thing hadn’t made a peep and when they’d chanced a look under the table it’d given birth on top of cousin Isaac’s shoes. Bucky’s  _ still _ not sure what exactly it had given birth too, but the experience had been traumatizing to poor Isaac.  

Steve hooks his ankle around Bucky’s, and Bucky turns from where he’s talking with Natasha to get caught up in watching Steve say something to Nick. 

Natasha rests her chin on Bucky’s shoulder moments later, the jut of it digging in sharply in a way that Bucky’s sure is on purpose. 

“You probably wish you were born with twelve eyes just so that you could look at him more,” Natasha says. 

Bucky scoffs, turning his head to look at Natasha where she’s suddenly very close, a smile curling the corners of her mouth. When she actually smiles her smile is like Steve’s, warm and sharp and terrifying with what could be behind it, but where Natasha’s is sharp like a well placed knife to the gut Steve’s has always felt like a fist wrapped around Bucky’s heart in the best of ways. 

“It’s a good look,” Natasha says, the smile still there, though turning teasing even before she speaks again, “Though it occasionally makes me wish I was born with none so that I wouldn’t have to look at it so often.” 

Bucky scoffs again, this time in her face and Natasha kicks at his ankle with an expensive sharply heeled foot, and then they’re off. 

Eons of life lived between the two of them and still acting like badly behaved siblings. 

 

Later, when everyone has been fed, a round of drinking has happened on the roof, tupperware containers filled with leftovers and distributed. Later, when they have untangled themselves from the family, and made the trek back home. When they’ve stumbled through their front door and out of their clothes and into their bed. 

Later, after all of that, when Steve is atop of Bucky, their hands, their bodies, their lives all tangled up in each other, Bucky finds himself as always unable to take his eyes off of Steve. Steve who lights up under the moonlight through their window, whose eyes scream for rebellion and whose heart breaks and comes together again with compassion, who Bucky looks at and sees centuries with. Millennia. Eternities.

**Author's Note:**

> Come scream with me on twitter @attackofthezee or lurk with me on dreamwidth at stevergrsno.


End file.
